VNC to GDM, with login … it can work !

admin — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 15:11:51 +0000

The reason for the recrudescence of Ubuntu posts on this blog was originally due to me wanting to put that free OS on a couple of old machines I had at home. For some of them it worked, for some it did not, but at one point I still had to buy a brand new machine, and this was the real key starting point in my Ubuntu experience. Only problem is that I did not expect my wife to like this move and as result have her take possession of the new hardware on the sole excuse that it works much better for her drawings/website designing hobby. That leaves me with my old machine, still running Windows XP (since some games for my little kid only work there) and me getting frustrated ! So I decided I’d made a better use of my super new hardware and have the both of us actually use the good machine, and use the old one just for it’s screen and keyboard !

I started to look for some info on the Internet, and found this first Howto about the subject. The idea is to install and configure a different Xserver than the one used by default in Ubuntu, configure GDM (the default window manager) to enable remote access as well as remote login, and finally use a simple VNC viewer on the client side to access the beauty. Unfortunately it’s only after a few tests that I discovered that it was addressing a rather old version of Ubuntu, and that Gutsy definitely needed some different configuration … But after already a few hours of work, I was on the good track.
I continued looking for info, and found the official help page for VNC, which I though would directly give me the good configuration to apply … This was to good to be true First let me say about this tutorial is that I do not really understand their server/client differentiation since all the GDM configuration actually happens on the server side … or at least that’s were I did it ! But since the first tutorial was pretty clear, I took it that on was on the right page. Anyhow this help page gave me some few extra pointers but I still could not get the connection from the client working and still got the “connection refused” message. At that point, I was really getting annoyed and close to letting everything go.
Fortunately I finally found this post which doesn’t say much, but made my day ! It helped me tuneup the last configuration problem I had ! And I was up and running with my new hardware from my old system !
With all that, you don’t know what configuration I made … Don’t worry here it comes !

First I installed xinetd via the traditional
```
sudo apt-get install xinetd
```

Then I configured the vnc service by creating a vnc file in the /etc/xinetd.d/ directory :

sudo nano /etc/xinetd.d/vnc

and adding the folowing data into it

service vnc
{
	disable = no
	socket_type = stream
	protocol = tcp
	wait = no
	user = nobody
	server = /usr/bin/Xvnc
	server_args = -inetd :1 -query ::1 -broadcast -once -fp /usr/share/fonts/X11/misc/ -securitytypes=none -desktop=Server -extension XFIXES -geometry 1152x864
}

Note that the final parameter (geometry) is actually the size of the old machine, so the one I’ll be connecting from with the VNC client.

I modified the /etc/services file to add this line:

	vnc             5901/tcp                        # VNC with GDM

I modified the gdm.conf (/etc/gdm/gdm.conf) file to have the following lines in the sections :
```
....
Greeter=/usr/lib/gdm/gdmgreeter
....
DisallowTCP=false
....
[xdmcp]
Enable=true
....
```
Finally restarting the xinetd and gdm services (sudo /etc/init.d/xinetd restart) should do the trick, but I did so many reboots, that a last one did not hurt so that’s what I did !
And after all that, I used TightVnc client to connect to my mew machine on port 5901 ( you can actually also use xxx:1 instead of xxx:5901) and I saw the beautiful GDM login screen !

It is a warrior’s road, but there is an end to it … Keep faith, and result will come boys ! That’s always what I’m telling myself when dealing with Ubuntu’s tricky configuration problems

DVD playback with Ubuntu

admin — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 16:40:40 +0000

This was one feature I never got working until just a few minutes ago, even though I tried a couple of times !
Thanks to sebz, and a shared Google Reader item, the following article explains you how to do that !
Since it is really simple, here are the two commands you need to type in a terminal to get your DVDs running :
sudo apt-get install totem-xine libxine1-ffmpeg libdvdread3 sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread3/install-css.sh

Right after that, insert your DVD in your drive, and you should be on the road for some classic DVD watching on your favorite free open-source OS !
For the record, I even successfully played the DVD from french comic Jean Marie Bigard, which was impossible on Windows XP !
PS: Sorry Vince, you were right, it IS simple to play DVD … Once you know the correct configuration

Changing the default language with Ubuntu

admin — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 15:04:17 +0000

On the request of a friend, here is how one can change the default language in Ubuntu Gutsy (7.10).

It is actually a pretty simple action, but no one seems to remember how it’s actually being done ! So just go in the System/Administration/Language Support. A window will open, and you can here select the languages that you want your OS to support, and which one you want to make the default one.

The actual pretty slick thing about this, is that all the applications (actually the one supported, but that’s most of them) will reflect this change. So if you made the mistake of installing Ubuntu in French and you’re wife is not happy with it … You have a two clicks exit

Simon's Mess » Configuration

VNC to GDM, with login … it can work !

DVD playback with Ubuntu

Changing the default language with Ubuntu